


Losing our Footing

by Katydid_99



Category: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey
Genre: Aromantic, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Gay Male Character, Grinding, Groping, Internalized Homophobia, Lust at First Sight, Lust not love, M/M, Making Out, Mental Instability, Mental Institutions, Pansexual Character, Period-Typical Homophobia, Tongues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-31
Updated: 2018-01-31
Packaged: 2019-03-12 01:11:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13536489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katydid_99/pseuds/Katydid_99
Summary: "It wasn't love; this wasn't the sort of place where love could thrive, but it was something burning and desperate and real..."A study on McMurphy and Harding's relationship(not movie compliant)





	Losing our Footing

Dale Harding is small and delicate with his neat dark hair, pink marble skin, and pretty bird hands that flap and dance when he talks; you're certain that if not for the his contralto voice and distinct lack of tits he'd easily be mistaken for a dame. Dale Harding is also as stubborn and cynical as a big-shot lawyer with quirked eyebrows ans a quick tongue barbed silver with Shakespearean insults and Wilde-esque epigrams.

He is nothing like you. 

He is exactly like you.

You meant it on the last night, when the party had wound down and you, him, and Chief had drunkenly pour out pieces of yourselves from your mental wounds. When you said that you were different too, meant it in the same way. If anything, you were less picky. Monogamy was never your scene. You'd never be bound by a vow before God if there ever was such a thing or a ring on your left forefinger, but either than that you've screwed them all. Old, young, beautiful, plain, black, white, man, woman, and everything in-between.

The two of you were friends, but the tension between you for something better was palpable. In every back-handed compliment and beautiful insult. In every lingering touch and in every touch undone. It wasn't love; this wasn't the sort of place where love could thrive, but it was something burning and desperate and  _real._ In a place where everything else is cold and fake, that's all that matters.

Without warning, the tension popped like a bubblegum bubble on the last night. Sefelt had been dealt with, the gravity of what tonight meant was eminent, and the second you were all back in the Night Ward Harding shoves you down onto a bed and kisses you in front of everyone. Muscle memory overrode shock and you kissed back, feeling like fire and drowning and getting obliterated by twelve-thousand volts. Everything was tangled hands in pulled hair and the scent of wine mixed with cherry cough syrup on your breath as your tongues writhe. Your hands found their way to his hips, and you pulled him closer so that he straddles your crotch and-

and _Jesus, Mary, and Joseph-!_

Everything- everyone- else vanished behind the release, with their looks of suprisenotsuprise and slyly exchanged dollar bills. You discovered that one of your hands takes up his entire waist and you swear to God he almost screamed when your callouses catch on one of his nipples.

It wasn't until your hand began to navigate south that his grip tightens on your hair and he yanks your mouth from his.

You were both flushed and panting, and you were about to apologize and suggest you go back to kissing, but then you see the look in his blown-pupil Newman blue eyes. You see that he does want your hand to keep going south, to where your hips are still locked as he sits up and looks over his work. But behind that is everything else. Vera. Society. Miles and miles of self-loathing and fear and desperation.

Then someone chucked a pillow at his head, and when he looked the other way to find the culprit you took the opportunity to snake the pillow from under your head and smack it against his chest. From there the whole room dissolved into a massive pillow fight and your little floor show is forgotten. 

When you eventually blacked out that night, Sandy clinging to your back and Harding tucked against your chest, you dream of another time where you could have had more than blank faces and white walls.

**Author's Note:**

> While I do like the movie, it leaves a lot of stuff out especially when it comes to Harding (in which they basically took out everything that made him likable because in the 70s you can show forced lobotomies and suicide in film but you can't show gay people -_-).
> 
> In the book the two have some super palpable chemistry, and while Kesey never spoke of Mac's sexuality, it's actually pretty interesting to theorize on. Basically, McMurphy is a very sexual person, and that doesn't change even when he's in an environment that's pretty much all male. And while he talks a lot about sex, he never really veers into the romance side of things. I've personally pegged him down as aromantic pansexual, but that's just my opinion.


End file.
